Thursday, June 6, 2013

Eat Your Vegetables

In an effort to be frugal and waste less, our family has made a lot of changes in the past few months. I have learned to cook (and cook well), so we eat at home instead of at restaurants. I am using menus, grocery lists, and shopping lists so that we waste less food. But I was still throwing lots of food away. In particular, vegetables were being wasting in massive quantities.

I've done three things to pretty much end the wasting of veggies in our household:

1. When I make our shopping list each week, I check on the veggies in the fridge. Anything not used gets chopped and frozen for later meals. I now pull frozen carrots out to add to stew or onions out to use with burgers. Leftover zucchini? Stir-fry! Jalapenos? I pre-prepare poppers and toss those in the freezer.

(Chefs will tell you to quickly boil things like carrots before freezing. I probably should do that. I don't, though, and no one has complained. I do chop or cut veggies into reasonable sizes before freezing, since you cannot chop a frozen carrot.)

2. I designated a gallon ziploc bag in my freezer to hold scraps of savory vegetables (like onion, garlic, and green onion). I am going to simmer those veggie scraps with the bones of a rotisserie chicken to make homemade stock.

3. Finally, there is no reason to waste little bits of veggies that can give a kick to other meals. The tops of these fresh jalapenos wouldn't work so well in stock, but the tiny pieces are perfect for adding to taco meat, enchiladas, or Mexican pasta for a tiny kick! I plan to just keep reloading that same ziploc bag and use a little at a time. I am keeping some little containers (like sour cream containers) for freezing things like green onions or jalapeno bits while recycling the container, but I was out of those when I started this ziploc.

We have saved a lot of money this way. Even better, our food is so much better for our taste buds and our health, since it always contains yummy veggies.Etcetera.